7 ms·

A ranking of the highest tech salaries in the US, adjusted for cost of living

54 points by dangrover 9y ago

electricslpnsld 9y ago
Unfortunately one meal at Franklin Barbecue, while delicious, will immediately exhaust any extra savings one might accrue through the cheaper cost of housing.
- RhysU 9y ago
  True, but the HEB tortillas are so cheap it's a wash.
paulddraper 9y ago
This entirely depends on what you spend your money on. Suppose NYC real estate is 8x the cost compared to my current city of Lehi, Utah. * If I want a large house with a yard, I'll pay $500k with $1.8k/month mortgage in Lehi, or $4 million with $14.4k/month mortgage in NYC. * If I want to share a smallish apartment, I'll pay $400/month in Lehi, or $3.2k/month in NYC. Non-real estate items like groceries, gas, and gym memberships are not 8x more in NYC. (They're more, but not that much more.) --- So.....what am I comparing? Good housing, or good transportation, or good hobbies, good savings, etc.? I'm assuming the measurement averages these, but people prioritize and consume these different than the average. If you live in a cardboard box and save most of your pay check, you'll get an overall pay raise in NYC.
- aphextron 9y ago
  >* If I want to share a smallish apartment, I'll pay $400/month in Lehi, or $3.2k/month in NYC. That's not even remotely realistic. $3,200/mo in NYC will get you a luxury 1bd in Manhattan. $1500 is more like it for a small studio or roommate situation.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    (1) NYC has rent controls but not property value controls, so that does throw things off. (2) Perhaps I should have done the numbers with 4x. The idea is the same.
souprock 9y ago
The entire list is expensive cities. This is a typical problem for such lists. It's easy to ignore nearly all of the country. Austin did best, but that isn't cheap.
joshuamorton 9y ago
Naively adjusting CoL like this always over-corrects and favors lower cost places. This would only be a valid comparison if you saved exactly $0 each year. If you are able to save a portion of your income (as hopefully anyone with any of these salaries is), linear comparisons don't make sense. You need to compare the difference in CoL as the percentage of that salary that goes towards CoL. In other words, if you save 50%, to keep the same standard, you need to CoL adjust only the other 50% (and maybe a bit more to keep your emergency fund weighted). grumble
- sotojuan 9y ago
  > You need to compare the difference in CoL as the percentage of that salary that goes towards CoL. Great insight. Here in NYC, I know a few frugal programmers who share a 2 bedroom with a friend such that he pays about 25% of his income in rent (that's A LOT of money to save/enjoy life with). Another is nearing 40% but because he prefers living alone. And there's always the "I want to live like they did in Friends/I want a 10 min commute" coworker that spends 60%+ on rent. These kind of studies make it seem like most people live like the latter, when my personal experience as an engineer in NYC, the city is not unaffordable at all ... unless you want to own property ASAP. Honestly, what I've learned is that COL discussions are hard because people spend money differently and value different things.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jdtang13 9y ago
  > This would only be a valid comparison if you saved exactly $0 each year. Sounds like me. Just kidding, this is a really valid point, and I never thought about this missing variable.
  - sjwright 9y ago
    Except it matters what you eventually do with those savings. If you end up spending that money in the same city. Therefore the GP really should have said: This would only be a valid comparison if you don't plan to repatriate a substantial portion of your earnings to a low CoL city.
sambrand 9y ago
This reflects more or less what we found, in 2016, in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016#salaries-and-rent-per-city https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016#salaries-and-... TLDR: Move to Montreal.
- nadezhda18 9y ago
  glad to read your conclusion! I live in Montreal and I do think it has a surprisingly low CoL combined with a high-quality lifestyle. Glad to see it is confirmed by your data. I personally live in a 3 bedroom apt I rent for $635 a month ($795 if taking into account the electricity used for heating) and the apt is located 25 min by public transportation (foot + metro) away from downtown.
  - aphextron 9y ago
    >I personally live in a 3 bedroom apt I rent for $635 a month ($795 if taking into account the electricity used for heating) and the apt is located 25 min by public transportation (foot + metro) away from downtown. Wow thats incredible. What are salaries like though?
    - calcul_integral 9y ago
      For junior back-end node.js dev (right out of school) it was between 50-55k CAD a year ago from offers from gaming places I've got, although video game companies (very big in MTL) are known to pay a bit less and compensate with lifestyle/cool job. Seniors can certainly reach 100k+. edit Another offer I got, Entry level Production Support at a bank pays 60k with 3 weeks of vacations. Deloitte also had a job of customizing ERP for clients in similar $ range if you're interested in corporate stuff. All of the above example are for <1 year of experience. As far as actually getting a job I would say it's very easy, even with little experience. A LOT of companies (tech and non-tech) are looking for talent and you easily get offers, although top/elite companies are mostly similar to the US in term of selection.
    - nadezhda18 9y ago
analyst74 9y ago
These kind of CoL comparisons have obvious flaws as pointed out by other comments. I brushed them off when moving from Toronto to SF, only to realize later how accurate they are, if you don't plan to dramatically reduce your living standard. On a side note, there are legit reasons why most people try to keep up their appearances as opposed to live frugally and save every penny.
- chocolatebunny 9y ago
  Hey I did the same thing late last year. I gave up a bungalow I payed $1200 a month (bought it 2011) for for a one bedroom apartment I pay $2400 a month for. Yay! But I live alone so a 50% boost in income offsets the doubling in housing costs (I think). And honestly, outside of housing (and healthcare) I don't really see anything else being too crippling.
svachalek 9y ago
Another thing to consider about CoL comparisons is local lifestyles. Those who are living in SF or NYC are probably out of the house enjoying local nightlife a lot, those in warm sunny places are probably out enjoying nature, while those living in cold suburbs probably spend a lot more time on home and hobbies. So, in some places you can buy a lot more house while in others you need a lot less house. In places where housing is expensive there's also a lot less peer pressure to have a big house; it's not like all your coworkers in a SF startup are talking about their 4 bedroom ranch houses.
- deathanatos 9y ago
  > it's not like all your coworkers in a SF startup are talking about their 4 bedroom ranch houses. No, but they can't talk about something more reasonable, either; the price of the majority of the Bay Area's housing exceeds the income of the majority of Bay Area engineers. (This assumes a median house price of ~$750k (cf, [1]), and an unwillingness to pay 45% of your after-tax income in housing.) [1]: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/29/bay-area-median-home-price-november-2017/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/29/bay-area-median-...
adverbly 9y ago
There is no way that 73k in Toronto is the same as 153k in San Fran. I wonder if the 73k is in CAD or USD... Regardless, the average home in Toronto is around $1m CAD, plus you lose a bit more to taxes because you live in Canada. I have a hard time believing that things are 3-4X as expensive in San Fran. Are people really paying $60 for a burger?
- jjeaff 9y ago
  Average Toronto home value is $775k to the Bay area's $825k. Don't know how the other stuff compares though.
SwellJoe 9y ago
I suspect studies like this trail reality by a few years. Austin cost of living, particularly housing, has sky-rocketed in recent years. It's still obviously much cheaper than Silicon Valley, but it's not cheap compared to surrounding major Texas cities like Houston or Dallas. It may still be a good balance of salary to cost of living, and probably is since most tech hubs are also very expensive. But, it's not like it once was (I first bought a house there in the early 2000s, and have rented, and shopped for real estate, there on a number of occasions since then).
dmode 9y ago
These cost of living calculators are severely flawed. It fails to capture that RSUs form a significant % of compensation in the Bay Area. It also fails to capture the exponential impact of high dual income. Also, fails to account for rapid income gain from real estate appreciation. Finally, fails to account for the ability to switch jobs quickly and climb corporate ladder.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  The average silicon valley programmer is not taking advantage of the rapid gain improperly values. On the contrary, they can't afford to buy so they rent... And their rent goes up every year as values skyrocket.
purplezooey 9y ago
Nice to see San Diego up there. Thinking of moving there after 10 years here in the bay.
ablekh 9y ago
Since when Atlanta is not a major metropolitan area? Based on a super quick research, I would expect ATL to, at least, lead the chart, if not land at its top.
moltar 9y ago
How’s Toronto double of what it is adjusted? Toronto living is not that low. It is in real estate bubble, and food is expensive compared to US. No way that’s accurate.

54 points by dangrover 9y ago

Unfortunately one meal at Franklin Barbecue, while delicious, will immediately exhaust any extra savings one might accrue through the cheaper cost of housing.

RhysU 9y ago
True, but the HEB tortillas are so cheap it's a wash.

paulddraper 9y ago

This entirely depends on what you spend your money on. Suppose NYC real estate is 8x the cost compared to my current city of Lehi, Utah. * If I want a large house with a yard, I'll pay $500k with $1.8k/month mortgage in Lehi, or $4 million with $14.4k/month mortgage in NYC. * If I want to share a smallish apartment, I'll pay $400/month in Lehi, or $3.2k/month in NYC. Non-real estate items like groceries, gas, and gym memberships are not 8x more in NYC. (They're more, but not that much more.) --- So.....what am I comparing? Good housing, or good transportation, or good hobbies, good savings, etc.? I'm assuming the measurement averages these, but people prioritize and consume these different than the average. If you live in a cardboard box and save most of your pay check, you'll get an overall pay raise in NYC.

aphextron 9y ago
>* If I want to share a smallish apartment, I'll pay $400/month in Lehi, or $3.2k/month in NYC. That's not even remotely realistic. $3,200/mo in NYC will get you a luxury 1bd in Manhattan. $1500 is more like it for a small studio or roommate situation.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  (1) NYC has rent controls but not property value controls, so that does throw things off. (2) Perhaps I should have done the numbers with 4x. The idea is the same.

souprock 9y ago

The entire list is expensive cities. This is a typical problem for such lists. It's easy to ignore nearly all of the country. Austin did best, but that isn't cheap.

joshuamorton 9y ago

Naively adjusting CoL like this always over-corrects and favors lower cost places. This would only be a valid comparison if you saved exactly $0 each year. If you are able to save a portion of your income (as hopefully anyone with any of these salaries is), linear comparisons don't make sense. You need to compare the difference in CoL as the percentage of that salary that goes towards CoL. In other words, if you save 50%, to keep the same standard, you need to CoL adjust only the other 50% (and maybe a bit more to keep your emergency fund weighted). grumble

sotojuan 9y ago
> You need to compare the difference in CoL as the percentage of that salary that goes towards CoL. Great insight. Here in NYC, I know a few frugal programmers who share a 2 bedroom with a friend such that he pays about 25% of his income in rent (that's A LOT of money to save/enjoy life with). Another is nearing 40% but because he prefers living alone. And there's always the "I want to live like they did in Friends/I want a 10 min commute" coworker that spends 60%+ on rent. These kind of studies make it seem like most people live like the latter, when my personal experience as an engineer in NYC, the city is not unaffordable at all ... unless you want to own property ASAP. Honestly, what I've learned is that COL discussions are hard because people spend money differently and value different things.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jdtang13 9y ago
> This would only be a valid comparison if you saved exactly $0 each year. Sounds like me. Just kidding, this is a really valid point, and I never thought about this missing variable.
- sjwright 9y ago
  Except it matters what you eventually do with those savings. If you end up spending that money in the same city. Therefore the GP really should have said: This would only be a valid comparison if you don't plan to repatriate a substantial portion of your earnings to a low CoL city.

sambrand 9y ago

This reflects more or less what we found, in 2016, in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016#salaries-and-rent-per-city https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016#salaries-and-... TLDR: Move to Montreal.

nadezhda18 9y ago
glad to read your conclusion! I live in Montreal and I do think it has a surprisingly low CoL combined with a high-quality lifestyle. Glad to see it is confirmed by your data. I personally live in a 3 bedroom apt I rent for $635 a month ($795 if taking into account the electricity used for heating) and the apt is located 25 min by public transportation (foot + metro) away from downtown.
- aphextron 9y ago
  >I personally live in a 3 bedroom apt I rent for $635 a month ($795 if taking into account the electricity used for heating) and the apt is located 25 min by public transportation (foot + metro) away from downtown. Wow thats incredible. What are salaries like though?
  - calcul_integral 9y ago
    For junior back-end node.js dev (right out of school) it was between 50-55k CAD a year ago from offers from gaming places I've got, although video game companies (very big in MTL) are known to pay a bit less and compensate with lifestyle/cool job. Seniors can certainly reach 100k+. edit Another offer I got, Entry level Production Support at a bank pays 60k with 3 weeks of vacations. Deloitte also had a job of customizing ERP for clients in similar $ range if you're interested in corporate stuff. All of the above example are for <1 year of experience. As far as actually getting a job I would say it's very easy, even with little experience. A LOT of companies (tech and non-tech) are looking for talent and you easily get offers, although top/elite companies are mostly similar to the US in term of selection.
  - nadezhda18 9y ago

analyst74 9y ago

These kind of CoL comparisons have obvious flaws as pointed out by other comments. I brushed them off when moving from Toronto to SF, only to realize later how accurate they are, if you don't plan to dramatically reduce your living standard. On a side note, there are legit reasons why most people try to keep up their appearances as opposed to live frugally and save every penny.

chocolatebunny 9y ago
Hey I did the same thing late last year. I gave up a bungalow I payed $1200 a month (bought it 2011) for for a one bedroom apartment I pay $2400 a month for. Yay! But I live alone so a 50% boost in income offsets the doubling in housing costs (I think). And honestly, outside of housing (and healthcare) I don't really see anything else being too crippling.

svachalek 9y ago

Another thing to consider about CoL comparisons is local lifestyles. Those who are living in SF or NYC are probably out of the house enjoying local nightlife a lot, those in warm sunny places are probably out enjoying nature, while those living in cold suburbs probably spend a lot more time on home and hobbies. So, in some places you can buy a lot more house while in others you need a lot less house. In places where housing is expensive there's also a lot less peer pressure to have a big house; it's not like all your coworkers in a SF startup are talking about their 4 bedroom ranch houses.

deathanatos 9y ago
> it's not like all your coworkers in a SF startup are talking about their 4 bedroom ranch houses. No, but they can't talk about something more reasonable, either; the price of the majority of the Bay Area's housing exceeds the income of the majority of Bay Area engineers. (This assumes a median house price of ~$750k (cf, [1]), and an unwillingness to pay 45% of your after-tax income in housing.) [1]: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/29/bay-area-median-home-price-november-2017/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/29/bay-area-median-...

adverbly 9y ago

There is no way that 73k in Toronto is the same as 153k in San Fran. I wonder if the 73k is in CAD or USD... Regardless, the average home in Toronto is around $1m CAD, plus you lose a bit more to taxes because you live in Canada. I have a hard time believing that things are 3-4X as expensive in San Fran. Are people really paying $60 for a burger?

jjeaff 9y ago
Average Toronto home value is $775k to the Bay area's $825k. Don't know how the other stuff compares though.

SwellJoe 9y ago

I suspect studies like this trail reality by a few years. Austin cost of living, particularly housing, has sky-rocketed in recent years. It's still obviously much cheaper than Silicon Valley, but it's not cheap compared to surrounding major Texas cities like Houston or Dallas. It may still be a good balance of salary to cost of living, and probably is since most tech hubs are also very expensive. But, it's not like it once was (I first bought a house there in the early 2000s, and have rented, and shopped for real estate, there on a number of occasions since then).

dmode 9y ago

These cost of living calculators are severely flawed. It fails to capture that RSUs form a significant % of compensation in the Bay Area. It also fails to capture the exponential impact of high dual income. Also, fails to account for rapid income gain from real estate appreciation. Finally, fails to account for the ability to switch jobs quickly and climb corporate ladder.

jjeaff 9y ago
The average silicon valley programmer is not taking advantage of the rapid gain improperly values. On the contrary, they can't afford to buy so they rent... And their rent goes up every year as values skyrocket.

purplezooey 9y ago

Nice to see San Diego up there. Thinking of moving there after 10 years here in the bay.

ablekh 9y ago

Since when Atlanta is not a major metropolitan area? Based on a super quick research, I would expect ATL to, at least, lead the chart, if not land at its top.

moltar 9y ago

How’s Toronto double of what it is adjusted? Toronto living is not that low. It is in real estate bubble, and food is expensive compared to US. No way that’s accurate.